


The Runout Zone

by AstridMyrna



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Asphyxiation, Avalanches, CPR, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Men Crying, Near Death, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 11:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14852006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridMyrna/pseuds/AstridMyrna
Summary: On their way back to base, Cassian and Jyn have been swept up by an avalanche. Cassian was able to dig himself out, but will he be able to save Jyn?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Filling the tumblr prompt: Cassian cradling Jyn’s unconcious/almost dead body or Cassian crying into Jyn’s chest (cuz it seems like its always Cass who gets hurt or Jyn who cries)

“Echo Base, does anyone copy?” Cassian shouted as he finally pulled himself free from the snow and dove to the spot where Jyn fell. “Emergency. Avalanche. Erso buried.”

Cassian stumbled over to the spot and started digging with the spade he used to dig his legs out. He saw her jump off her tauntaun just before the rush of snow swallowed them whole, but he didn’t know how much snow piled on top of her, if she remembered to make an air pocket, or if she moved far from the spot he saw her fall. She  _must_  have been swept further down and he was wasting time–

Behind him, he heard a blaster shot. He turned and saw two more red blasts shoot through the snow a good six feet away, then scrambled downhill until he found the steaming hole.

“I’m here, Jyn!” he shouted into the hole. “Just hold on, hold on.”

The renewed hope in his heart chilled as he dug further and further down, following the blaster shot’s path but not finding the blaster and still hearing nothing but static from base. It wasn’t hypothermia that would kill her, but asphyxiation. An air pocket in the snow only trapped so much oxygen, but slowly Jyn would use up that air and suffocate. She was already under for at least eight, going on nine minutes. He didn’t want to imagine being immobile and trapped in that dark, cold grip, not knowing if his last gulp of air would be his last and then his oxygen-starved brain would hallucinate and make him relive events he’d rather leave done and forgotten–he shook his head to shove those fears aside. He couldn’t let Jyn die that way. 

Finally, at about two feet down he reached the barrel of the blaster. A second wind coming on, he cut through the snow until he could rip the blaster away–the blaster he gave her after Scarif–and squeezed her gloved fingers. She didn’t respond.

“C’mon, Jyn,” he muttered under his breath as he cleared the snow away from her arm. He couldn’t afford to panic and lose his head, because then he’d be wasting more time and energy he could be using to save Jyn. She had done half the work for him by firing his blaster and falling vertically so it would be easier for him to dig her out, now he had to finish his part. He worked his way down her arm and reached the top of her parka hood. He pocketed the spade and clawed at the snow around her pale face and neck, her arm flopped at her side. He yanked down her white balaclava and pressed his cheek against her frigid nose, but she had stopped breathing long enough for her lips to turn blue. 

“No, no,  _no_ ,” he moaned, his throat tightening around the last word. 

Cassian hacked the snow with the spade to free her chest and her thighs before he finally pulled her out. He ripped his glove off with his teeth to check for a pulse he knew wasn’t there, then bunched down his balaclava to give her two breaths.

“Echo Base! Do you copy! This is Andor,” he shouted into the comm as he gave her compressions. “Found Erso. I need emergency pick up in Sector 14. No pulse, no breathing. Gear lost.”

He halted the compressions to push more air into her lungs. He watched as her breast slowly rose and deflated, but it didn’t rise again until he forced more air into her. The muscles in his arms and back pinched and screamed at him as he started the compressions again, his gloved hand over his bare one as he thudded against the still, stiff wall of her chest in an effort to restart a heart he couldn’t reach. Maybe Jyn held out hope because he always came back for her, or maybe she thought he abandoned her in the end? 

“S-Someone, p-please help.”

He crumpled over her breast and heaved a sob, his hot tears freezing midway down his cheeks and crusting his beard with icicles. Jyn was dead. The person he shared his heart and heat and breath was dead. His body shivered with grief and with the Hothian chill that needled its way through the seams of his heavy snow pants. Snow fell in small, dusty clumps on Jyn’s cheek and melted like tears. Cassian brushed the damp away before it could freeze, then placed a hand over her breast where he knew she tucked her mother's kyber crystal, and he could feel it burn through her layers.

He couldn’t give up on her yet.

He pinched her nose and pulled her head back to blow another lungful of air into her, her lips warmer than when he first pulled her out. Her chest rose, fell, and laid still. After rubbing away the ice in his eyelashes with the back of his arm, he sealed his mouth over hers to push every last bit of air from his lungs into her. He broke away from her and swayed, lightheaded as he watched her chest fall, but then rise again.

Though still unconscious, she inhaled short, shallow breaths that brought a pinch of color back into her cheeks and lips. He pressed his fingers against her throat and nearly cried again when he felt the beat of her weak pulse.

“–dor? Andor, this is Ec–Base,–you copy?” his comm finally crackled.

Cassian zipped up Jyn’s jacket as he answered through chattering teeth, “Y-Yes, this is A-Andor.”

“Send coordinates, we–pick up.” 

As he detailed his coordinates, Cassian unzipped his parka and gently picked up Jyn so he could cradle her in his lap and protect her from the rising winds and dropping temperature as the sun made its journey down towards the white-washed horizon. His coat would only zip halfway, but it was enough to conserve what little heat they had. He kept an iron grip on her, forcing all of his energy on his fingers to hold on through his waves of shivering that grew more and more intense as time went on. Hopefully someone would see them even though their gear was snow-white to camouflage with the landscape and hide from the Empire, but he could already hear K-2 predicting that he had a better chance of surviving the Empire’s war than surviving Hoth.

Puffs of frosty air escaped from Jyn’s parted lips, but he curled his shoulders over her more instead of pulling her balaclava back up because he feared she would stop breathing again. He kissed her bare forehead, then rested his cheek on it.

Stars, he was exhausted.

* * *

"Hey, Andor, the cavalry’s here, but you need to let her go.”

“Yeesh, he’s got a karking death grip on her.”

“Maybe his fingers are frozen.”

“Cassian, it’s Han. You need to let go of Jyn so we can help her. Ok, that’s it–”

“Oop, he’s down. Give me a hand here–”

* * *

Cassian knew he was in the medbay before he opened his eyes. He was warm, first of all, and he knew the feel of the felted white blankets tucked in every bed of the overstuffed department. It was mostly quiet here, though he could hear someone moaning far away. The overly sweet smell of bacta clung to the air heated just enough to take the bite out of it. Slowly he opened his eyes and the other beds with patients sleeping in the dimmed light came into view. To his surprise, Jyn’s was across from his, watching him.

“About time you woke up,” she croaked and then cleared her throat. “I’m cold over here.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Grabbing his blanket with his bandaged hand (he hoped it was only burned and not frost bitten), he staggered towards her bed as she made room for him. At first it took a bit of twisting and turning to get comfortable and to be mindful of her bruised ribs, but they settled on Jyn laying flat on her back while Cassian laid on his side so he could hook both arms around her. Nothing was said. 

He stared at her and appreciated the flush of her cheek, the cool breath that she exhaled through her nose that fluttered against his chin. His hand on her hot neck, he felt her heartbeat thrumming against his fingertips. Just as he contemplated whether he should kiss her or not, she stretched her neck and brushed her dry, chapped lips against his. Her small hand grasped the front of his night shirt, and he took that hand with his bandaged one to gently kiss her scabbed knuckles.

“Did they tell you what happened?” he murmured.

“No, but I can guess. I heard you after I fired the blaster. I knew you were coming, but I passed out.” 

She swallowed hard, and looked at him with watery eyes and a grim look on her face that looked too much like the one she had given him on the beach in Scarif.

“I’m so sorry, Jyn, I should have gotten there faster,” he said, his voice thick with the growing pressure to cry. “If you hadn’t shot the blaster, I don’t know if I could have found you.”

“But you found me, Cassian.”

Jyn kissed him again, this time with a bit more force behind it and winced when she tried to turn to her side. He propped himself up on his elbow so she could lean back in her pillow as he returned the kiss, Jyn reaching out to curl her fingers around his neck and massage the back of his scalp. Suddenly, even with her safe and warm under him, he was strangled by the fear of losing her again. Jyn's face blurred with tears he couldn't hold in, so he broke away from her lips to kiss her chin, her throat, and the tip of her collarbone before her hands persuaded him to lay his head on her breast and she covered them both with his blanket so they could have their own private space.

Her breath rustled through his hair as he quietly wept, save for the gasps of air he needed to suppress the loud moans that would wake the entire base if he released them. Her thin arms braced around his head and shoulders. Strength radiated from her and comforted him, but he didn’t know if he could ever forgive himself.

“You found me, Cassian. You found me, you found me, you found me,” she chanted in a voice soft enough for a lullaby, until they both drifted off to sleep.


	2. Epilogue

Softly, Jyn woke up with Cassian still curled by her side in the white medbay bed. His body was not as tightly wound as when he first fell asleep in her arms, but his robed legs twined around hers and an arm hooked across her belly. He nuzzled the crook of her neck in his sleep as if he could sense that she was awake, but then he let out an exhausted sigh and he breathed long, slow, whispery breaths that grew into the rattling snore that meant he was  _asleep._  She had only been woken up by it three or four times before  during shore leave, when there was time and relative safety to be able to sleep so deeply. 

He worried over her so much. She could only imagine what went through his mind when he finally reached her. She had hoped that she only passed out, but she knew that it was more than that. She just remembered it getting harder and harder to breathe until her mouth popped open like a fish trying to gasp for air but remembering nothing after that. Jyn burrowed her nose in his hair, inhaled the damp scent of sweat with a hint of blaster oil that never seemed to leave his skin. She pursed her lips so she could resist kissing him and waking him up from his badly needed sleep.

Shoes clicking against the tile broke her out of her trance. Jyn glared daggers out into the dimly lit ward, ready to challenge any nurse that would try to rip him away from her. Cassian’s toes flexed against her calves as he squeezed into a tighter curl around her, his snores replaced with erratic, short breaths. She tightened her hold on him as the footsteps grew louder and closer.

It wasn’t a nurse, though. It was Han.

 _Just keep walking, don’t look this way,_ she thought.

He turned his head towards her, mouth hanging halfway open like a confused puppy.

 _Damn it_.

His brows knitted in confusion for a moment, and then it registered in his slow, lunking brain. She got along with Han, liked him actually, and understood his dance about sticking with the Rebellion for all these years, but he thought he was sly when he really wasn’t and it drove her up a wall. Like now. He snapped his jaw shut into a wicked smirk and raised his eyebrows at Jyn. She felt her glare lose its venom when she widened her eyes to silently plead with him.

_Please, please don’t wake him up. Please don’t tell the others. Let him have this._

To her surprise, Han’s face softened liked butter. He dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out her kyber crystal pendant. Jyn gasped, then regretted it when Cassian muttered something in his sleep. Han pointed to the crystal and at her side table, then practically tip-toed along the side of her bed to gingerly lay the necklace on the table. A smile cracked over her face when he mimed zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key. She couldn't help but smile. This stupid, big hearted fool. He sneaked away, gave her a wink, and walked out back the way he came.

Just as he left, Cassian stirred and moaned until he opened his eyes still veiled with sleep.

“Go to sleep, Cassian,” Jyn whispered, and kissed his brow until his eyelids drifted shut again.

Cassian’s breath rolled over her neck, soothing her jitters from Han’s visit, but it was his snores that lulled her back to sleep.

 

 

 


End file.
